A South Carolina mayor demanded a state police investigation after she alleges her vehicle was vandalized by racists while parked in front of her home.
Lamar Mayor Darnell Byrd McPherson called local police last month after she alleged someone sprayed her Hyundai Elantra and her husband’s Buick Roadmaster with some sort of powdery substance, and it instantly sparked fears the elderly black woman was targeted by racists.
The mayor explained to police how the substance “got in all of the grooves” of her husband’s car, and “looked like little pebbles” when they inspected the vehicles parked at the end of their driveway.
“My husband went out to the car to get some things out of the garage,” McPherson told Newsweek. “He says, ‘Somebody’s painted your car!”
A neighbor who stopped by also noticed, she said.
“Darnell, there’s something on your car,” McPherson said the man told the couple. “They started rubbing it and it was this yellow, sticky substance. So it was like, What is this?”
Hate crime, more than likely it was a heinous hate crime directed at the volunteer mayor because of her race, McPherson concluded.
“I likened it as a hate crime because No. 1, there’s a history in our town of Lamar,” she said.
McPherson’s fears conjured scenes of white vigilante mobs standing in the way of black students heading to newly segregated schools in the 1970s, setting crosses ablaze and other racial attacks from the past.
“It ignited some fear in my spirit,” she said. “My God, who would do that?
“It was something; it was just unnerving to me.”
The police report noted there were no symbols or messages written on the car, which was parked about a block from downtown Lamar.
“To me that was the message,” McPherson said, though she struggled to understand why she would become a target.
“I have a good reputation,” she said. “I have never been subjected to something like this.”
Two sheriff’s officials responded to the alleged hate crime and “immediately came to the conclusion that the substance had a yellowish tint to it and that it’s a type of powder similar to pollen.”
Police deduced the local trees and plants were the likely culprit, but McPherson wouldn’t let it go.
“Love conquers hate and my husband and I refuse to be intimidated by those who perpetuated this act of vandalism which I classify as an act of hatred,” she told WPDE. “As an aside, during the 70s, crosses were burned in the yard of our home when my mother was involved in the civil rights movement. On this very same corner in this very same front yard!”
She also claimed without evidence that hate crimes are on the rise in South Carolina.
The police report alleges the mayor initially acknowledged the substance could have been pollen but later told police she had “a possible suspect in mind at that time.”
The case was forwarded to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division based on McPherson’s insistence. The vehicles were cleaned twice after the police visit and the mayor told WPDE investigators were “unable to make a determination of the substance because no sample was taken by the Lamar Police Department.”
Darlington County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Robby Kilo told Newsweek the mayor essentially forced the responding officers to forward the investigation to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.
“Due to the suspicion from her of it being a hate crime, we couldn’t say no,” he said.
A spokeswoman the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said the state shelved the case “because we did not believe a crime occurred.”
“We reviewed the report but we did not open a formal investigation,” she said.
Regardless, McPherson remains convinced the stunt was a hate crime and her message of unity is needed now more than ever.
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